Forum celebrates ecological ranching

Friday

Nov 22, 2013 at 11:00 AM

When Tom Lasater went looking for like-minded ranchers at the recent Quivira Conference, he soon knew he had come to the right place.

By Candace KrebsContributing Writer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Tom Lasater went looking for like-minded ranchers at the recent Quivira Conference, he soon knew he had come to the right place.
“I signed up off the cuff,” he said of his trip, which took him to a ranch near Fort Sumner, N.M., to buy cattle and then a couple hours out of his way to Albuquerque to attend the annual conference before returning to Colorado.
“We don't use pesticides on our cattle or on our land, so it's difficult to find people who ranch the way we do,” said the manager of the Lasater Grasslands Beef program. “I'm hoping to meet other ranchers to potentially supply us.”
Direct marketing, grass finishing and building closer relationships with consumers are all popular ideas at the annual forum, which was started in 2002 with the intention of cultivating common ground between the ranching and environmental communities. The event attracts cattlemen with large spreads looking for new strategies to improve their ranges, but it also draws scientists, land managers, urban gardeners, beginning farmers, community organizers, artists and writers.
The name Quivira, used by the nonprofit hosting organization as well as by the conference, is taken from a mythical Spanish term used on colonial maps to designate unexplored territory.
Dennis Moroney is a model for the new kind of rancher the group champions. Once $2 million in debt, he got his finances back in line by putting more than 2,000 acres of land into conservation easements, adding value to his livestock by direct-marketing grass-finished crossbred Wagyu cattle and living off the grid for the past 20 years.
“It's about ranching in the right hemisphere, and I'm not talking about geography,” he said at one point, adding later, “There's a grim reality to the conventional model of ranching. The way to counteract our traditional dependence on left-brain thinking is by celebrating the unintended consequences of inefficiency. It provides a place where nature can find a home.”
With 530 registrants max, the conference has sold out its space in a midtown hotel for the past two years. Executive Director Avery Anderson, who took over the position from founder Courtney White one year ago, said the city's only larger venue is the conference center, and so far the staff has been reluctant to move and disrupt the event's folksy feel.
Pioneers of the sustainable ranching movement come here to network as well as to recharge.
“It's a big shot in the arm every year,” said Kay James, the matriarch of a Durango ranch family that is a fixture at the conference and participates in the group's extensive internship program. The “James gang” made a name for themselves by creating a series of offshoot ventures, such as cheese making, vegetable growing and nature tours, to make room for three grown children to join the family ranch.
Love of land, common ground
William Heck, who manages a ranch for the Grasslands Charitable Foundation in the Portales, N.M., area is typical of conference goers looking for inspiration from other “forward-thinkers.” He came late to agriculture after a background in wildlife management, which included endangered species work. He believes the Endangered Species Act started out with good intentions but is now flawed and sees its evolution as a product of increasingly rancorous times.
“The Endangered Species Act was never meant to be used as a weapon,” he said one morning before the formal program began. But he also believes ranchers should be “true stewards” who refuse to “lay waste” to the natural environment.
The ability to take a broad view plants him firmly at the “radical center” promoted by the conference since its inception, which is based on the notion that “most of the time the solutions are somewhere in the middle,” Heck said.
Scott Perez, of Durango, was another attendee with a soft spot for both resource management and ranching. He started out as a “landless” working cowboy, left to go to college at Cornell University and came back to the area to serve two years as the executive director of the La Plata Open Space Conservancy. Inspired by his son with Down syndrome, who is now showing pigs in 4-H, he's looking for a way to get more involved in promoting agriculture as an avenue for youth development.
“I'm still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up,” Perez joked.
Still another example of the rancher-ecologist hybrid was Kent Reeves, a certified wildlife biologist, rangeland manager and cowboy poet who is organizing a conservation panel during the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., coming up in February.
He said he prefers what the conference has to offer to what he hears from academics and government agents back in his home state of California.
“What is being offered by the conventional agencies isn't enough. It isn't getting people to a truly sustainable place,” said Reeves, who is from Sacramento. “People here are talking about things like soil health, holistic management and planned grazing. It's inspiring, it's energizing and it's exciting.”